Next Pay-Plan Decision Up to Denver Voters

Hardly pausing to celebrate the go-ahead they got from teachers,
proponents of a plan to remake the educators’ salary scale in
Denver have fixed their eyes on persuading city voters to approve a tax
increase to pay for it.

"I think what [the teachers’ vote] really means is 18 to 24
months of hard work," said Brad Jupp, a union activist and one of the
leaders of the venture.

Even if the voters say yes in November 2005 to a hike that would
bring in $25 million annually, significant chunks of the plan must be
fleshed out before it could take complete effect in January 2006.

Denver teachers voted in mid-March to embrace a new pay plan that
would stop rewarding them for years on the job and start recognizing
specific skills and achievements in the classroom.

Members of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association supported the
proposal, written as part of the teachers’ contract, by a
decisive 59 percent to 41 percent. About 2,700 of the union’s
3,200 members cast ballots. The 70,000-student district has about 4,500
teachers.

District administrators and local union leaders, who had hurried
from school to school during the weeks leading up to the balloting to
explain what they saw as the benefits of the system, said they were
surprised but gratified by the margin of victory. The votes were
tallied March 19. ("Teacher
Vote on Merit Pay Down to Wire," March 17, 2004.)

"We thought it would be very close," said Superintendent Jerry
Wartgow. "We’re starting with a good, strong base. We have a lot
of work to do."

‘A Boon’

In Denver and across the nation, teachers typically are paid on the
basis of years of service and the extent of their graduate education
courses. But while many observers say that system should go, it has not
been easy to challenge.

In 2002, for instance, Cincinnati teachers resoundingly rejected a
pay-for-performance plan that, like Denver’s, had been in the
making for several years. The Cincinnati plan had even steered clear of
the most controversial area of merit pay: rewards linked to student
test scores.

"Performance pay has been pushed on the policy front," said Kate
Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, an
advocacy group in Washington. "But down in the trenches, I think
teachers have maintained a great skepticism about whether it would be
fairly applied."

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest union
and the parent of the Denver association, officially opposes departures
from the traditional pay scale.

Ms. Walsh and others say that if the plan goes into effect,
Denver’s experience will shed important light on whether the way
teachers are paid makes a difference.

The Denver framework provides teachers with several ways to earn
raises—in most cases, a small percentage of starting yearly pay
for a credentialed teacher—including student academic growth as
measured by test scores. Teachers may also get pay hikes by being
evaluated as satisfactory or by adding to their education or training,
as long as they show the benefit to their classrooms. In addition,
teachers working in high-poverty schools or in subjects with personnel
shortages would be paid more.

A newly hired Denver teacher with a bachelor’s degree and full
certification currently makes $32,971.

Teachers now on the payroll could stick with the current system
throughout their Denver careers or opt into the new one any time over
the first seven years, but no later. New teachers would automatically
be enrolled in the Professional Compensation System for Teachers, or
ProComp.

Although pay hikes would vary from teacher to teacher, the $25
million in additional tax money would represent a 12 percent hike
overall. District and union officials have said over and over that an
increase of that magnitude is politically feasible only if teachers are
paid along different lines.

"I think for all the young people going into education, this will be
a boon," said Robert A. Tomsich, a 4th grade teacher with 40
years’ experience who voted to go forward with the plan. Under
the traditional system, he said, teachers had to take on extra duties,
such as coaching, to make more money.

"You never got anywhere [in salary] for being excellent in your
job," he said.

Mr. Tomsich, who for a dozen years before his current assignment at
Crofton Elementary School worked at a high-poverty, low-performing
school in the district, argued that more money for teachers in such
schools was justified. "They do work differently and harder," he
said.

Mr Jupp, a teacher on leave who has been involved with the pay
initiative since it started more than five years ago, said he believed
that teachers voted for the plan because they could make more money
under it, and because they thought it would work fairly to connect pay
with their accomplishments in the classroom.

The union and the district jointly ran a four-year pilot program
that required teachers to set achievement goals for their students, and
then paid teachers more if students reached those goals. But that plan
proved complicated to implement and unpopular with teachers.

So, starting more than two years ago, the two sides, with continuing
support from foundations, began designing a more comprehensive salary
schedule. It incorporates the goal- setting while giving teachers more
avenues for earning pay raises. Evaluation of the pilot showed that
setting substantial and specific goals—more than reaching
them—tended to raise student achievement.

Mayoral Support

Union leaders attributed many of the "no" votes to distrust of the
district and worries about parts of the plan that are still not
completed.

District and union leaders express confidence that voters will
ultimately support the measure, which would increase taxes on a home
worth $251,000, the Denver average, by around $50 a year. The proposed
hike would be earmarked exclusively for the ProComp system and
safeguarded in a special trust fund administered along the lines of a
retirement trust fund.

Mayor John Hickenlooper of Denver endorsed the plan and pledged to
urge voters to agree to the tax increase.

Meanwhile, Superintendent Wartgow says that national interest in the
Denver experiment has swelled since the vote. "I’m getting phone
calls and e-mails from all over the country," he said. "We’re
very pleased and proud of the teachers who stepped forward into a new
arena."

Vol. 23, Issue 29, Page 3

Published in Print: March 31, 2004, as Next Pay-Plan Decision Up to Denver Voters

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